


The One Who Stays

by ellida



Category: The Serpent Gates - A. K. Larkwood
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Original Character Death(s), Plague, Pre-Canon, Sister-Sister Relationship, Sisters, a completely cheerful and not at all topical story!, mentions of corporal punishment and child abuse, the House of Silence being the House of Silence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25169857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellida/pseuds/ellida
Summary: Many times, there was a girl. Once, she had a sister.Or: Oranna and Ejarwa's childhood. Losing their family to plague, growing up in a temple of bones, getting sacrificed to gods, you know, the usual.
Relationships: Oranna & Ejarwa - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	The One Who Stays

**Author's Note:**

> I came, I saw there was no Oranna origin fic yet, I couldn't help myself. 
> 
> I'm choosing to read Oranna's claim to have studied magic "all fourteen years of [her] life" up to the sacrifice as dramatic hyperbole; other than that, I've followed canon.
> 
> All lines of the Unspoken liturgy are quoted from _The Unspoken Name_.
> 
> I aspire to Tamsyn Muir–numbers and levels of intertextual references. I've fallen far, far short. You've been warned.

Once, there was a god, born deep within a mountain fastness, cradled in the belly of the earth.

Once, there was a temple, nestled in the foothills, calling out to the god.

Once, the god answered.

Once, there was a girl, chosen by the god, blessed with the gift of prophecy, set apart from all others, as the god drew her ever closer and closer. And in that closeness, the god hungered. Her hands, her eyes, her breath, her voice. _Mine_.

Once, there was a girl, blessed by the god, and the god demanded her life. And the temple complied. And the god had those things it had hungered for—body, breath, voice—and it found them good.

But the god burned bright within the girl, and her small frame could not contain it, not for long. Her flesh crumbled to dust, inch by inch, until all that remained was bone. Tusk, tooth, femur, scapula. No eyes, no breath, no voice. Not hands but phalanges.

So the god called out to the temple, as before, and the temple answered, again as before. How could it not?

Once, there was another girl, chosen to die by the god and the temple.

And then, before she crumbled, another. And another. And another. And another, down through the years. On and on and on. Body, breath, voice. Death. Life. Flame. Dust. Blood. Bone. Another. And another. And another.

Until now.

Now there is another girl, latest but not last (never last) of the line.

But this girl is different. This girl has a sister.

***

_Plague shall come to the house, but thou wilt not sicken.  
  
_***

It begins as it always does.

The twins are four years old—younger than some, older than most. For them, it begins with a rumor.

“Eshna’s brother is sick,” their older sister Mirai announces as she barrels through the door of their cottage, tossing her school bag aside.

“Oh, really?” Their mother doesn’t turn from the hearth, but young as she is, Ejarwa can hear something bubbling beneath the innocuous words. Something sneaking, something sharp-edged, something terrible.

“She says he was coughing something awful, and he has funny dark spots all over his skin. And he’s hogging all the good blankets. Eshna says—”

“Mirai, come stir this. Now.” Their mother pushes a spoon into Mirai’s protesting fingers. “Stay inside, and watch over the little girls. Ejarwa, Oranna, mind your sister.”

“Mama, where are you going?” Oranna asks. Her eyes scrunch small, a sure portent that she’s thinking of tears. Ejarwa huddles next to her, guiltily grateful that her sister’s doing the asking, bearing the burden of fear for both of them.

“I’m going to the fields to get your father,” their mother says, wrapping a shawl over her shoulders. “Mirai, latch the door behind me, and don’t open it to anyone but me.”

She sees the twins’ worried faces and crouches down. “In times of sickness, we shelter indoors, just as the god does in the mountain, and we pray to be safely delivered. I’ll be back soon, and we’ll all shelter together. Unspoken willing, we aren’t too late.”

But they are too late. Mirai sickens first, a bare two days after they bar their door. Their parents trade worried glances over the twins’ heads, but Ejarwa is looking up, up, always up, and she sees.

Her father sits by Mirai’s bed, wringing cloths for her brow into the basin of cool water and herbs replenished every few hours. Ejarwa and Oranna aren’t allowed into the bedroom anymore—they sleep in the big bed with their parents now—but they carry the basin to the doorway together each time their mother refills it. Small steps now, careful not to spill, Mirai needs this. Quiet now, she needs her rest. They step small-ly. They take care. They whisper softly. Mirai dies anyway.

Their father begins coughing as he digs his daughter’s grave behind the house (outside, in the edge of the yard, where they used to play but no longer go). He doesn’t stop. Their mother tucks him into Oranna’s bed. Later that day, she tucks Oranna into Ejarwa’s bed beside him, after Oranna tries to crawl into the fireplace to stop her shivering.

(Oranna hadn’t succeeded. Ejarwa grabbed her ankle and held on tight, screaming her throat raw, “Mama! Mama, come quick!”)

And then it’s more basins and herbs and cloths, more fires banked high and blankets tucked tight, more of all the cures that failed Mirai. Ejarwa sleeps in the big bed alone now, shivering under the old thin blanket, except for a few hours when Mama collapses next to her, and she’s grateful for the searing warmth of her, warmer than she can ever remember Mama being.

Until the morning she awakens to find her mother cold and still beside her.

Ejarwa runs downstairs and into the sickroom, her mother’s prohibition forgotten, crying, “Papa! Papa, come quick, it’s Mama, Mama needs you!”

Her father’s eyelids flicker, and she thinks his breath quickens a bit, but he doesn’t stir. Maybe more water will wake him? The herbs? A cloth?

Oranna cries out for some water, and Ejarwa runs to get it for her. Then a cloth for her sister, then one for her father. Back and forth, back and forth, she runs.

Ejarwa does her best to remember her mother’s mandates, and as the afternoon sun pours in through the window, her father opens his eyes, and for a single glorious moment, she thinks she’s succeeded, everything will be all right now, her father will make it so.

His eyes stare wide into hers. His breath rasps out in a hiss, and it doesn’t rasp in again. His eyes keep staring, unblinking, unhesitating. Unseeing. Unliving.

“Mama?” comes a thin whimper from her own little bed behind her. “I’m so thirsty, Mama,” and Ejarwa tears her eyes away from her father’s as she runs for more water.

All too soon, the water is gone. Ejarwa takes a bucket out back to the well, cutting her eyes away from the turned-over earth in the corner, but she can’t reach the handle. Mirai always does that part, or else her father lifts her up, but neither of them is here, and jump as she might, she can’t reach.

She pads back into the house and climbs into bed with Oranna. Her sister’s skin is hot, so hot, and her breath is rasping the way Papa’s did this morning.

“Please,” Ejarwa begs, not knowing whom she speaks to—someone, anyone, whoever they are, as long as they can help—“Please not Oranna. Not Oranna. Please.”

And something answers. A voice speaks out of the depths of her head, and the voice breaks her ears apart, even though they are ringing with the silence between Oranna’s gasped breaths.

_So, little handmaid,_ the voice thunders. _Already you ask a boon._

“Please save her. Save my sister,” Ejarwa grits out.

The voice sounds amused, and its amusement is terrible. _There is a price in service, in loyalty. Do you pledge yourself?_

What is it talking about? It sounds like something out of one of Mirai’s lessons, or Papa’s stories of heroes. Heroes. Maybe Oranna needs a hero. Ejarwa dares a nod, and the pain makes her vision spin. The voice still seems to be waiting.

“Yes?” she offers. The answer comes immediately.

_What will you offer me, my faithful, chosen child?_ The words feel like they will prise her skull apart. She struggles to speak around the pressure in her head.

“Everything,” Ejarwa promises. “Everything, everything. Just let her live.”

The presence intensifies, something flows through her, and she screams. After a moment, deliberately, it withdraws. Ejarwa lies gasping, reeling and shaking. Minutes pass, maybe hours. Later, she will learn that this is when the mage poison first enters her blood. This is the moment that changes everything. But that knowledge comes later. Right now, she takes refuge in stillness and waits for the pain to recede. If it’s going to recede, that is.

“Ejarwa?” Oranna’s face swims into her vision. “Mama’s going to be mad that you’re in here with me. I’m glad, though.”

With strength she didn’t know she had, Ejarwa throws herself into her sister’s arms and sobs. Oranna seems to understand. She doesn’t say anything else, just snuggles tighter against Ejarwa. Her milk tusks poke into Ejarwa’s shoulder. Ejarwa doesn’t mind.

When the priestesses come the next morning, they are still nestled together.

***

The twins are four years old when they enter the House of Silence and cause their first theological upset.

_Plague shall come to the house, but thou wilt not sicken._ It had always seemed clear enough to Prioress Sangrai that this meant only the Chosen Bride should survive, but—she admits ruefully—the Unspoken One is unknowable and unfathomable, and it is certainly by its will that Ejarwa was able to save her sister. And it is undeniably true that Oranna sickened, but Ejarwa did not.

Let them both enter. Doctrine will run its course and set them apart, Sangrai reasons. Henceforth, they will not be the twins, but Ejarwa and Oranna. Ejarwa, the Chosen Bride, the Handmaid of Desolation, the black lotus blooming in the midst of rot and decay. The favored one, blessed with Unspeakable magic. And Oranna. The…other one. An unremarkable novice among novices.  
  
***

And so the twins enter the House of Silence.  
  
Here, they learn the new roles assigned to them: Chosen Bride and novice.

Here, they creep into one another’s rooms after lights out and find themselves scourged with nettles for doing so until they learn to be stealthy enough to avoid notice.

Here, they grow older. Five. Six. Seven.  
  
Here, they learn how to speak to one another carefully, always carefully, how to hide affection behind the masks of protocol and reverence.

Here, they listen to the cooing of the dead.

Here, they dodge the quarrels and barbs of the other novices, taking solace in each other…and eventually, in the Litany of the Unpsoken.  
  
For here, too, they learn the terror and reverence of the sacraments to the Unspoken One.

Here, they learn to bind themselves ever closer to it in exchange for magical power. So much closer. So much power.  
  
Here, they grow even older. Eight. Nine. Ten.  
  
Here, the ritual words seep even into their dreams.

_The tongue is to be cut out, for the name of all that is praiseworthy is unspeakable. It is correct to seal the mouth and exult in starvation.  
  
_Here, their duty to the Unspoken One burrows like a canker into the twining petals of their love for one another.  
  
_The eyes are to be put out, for there is no use in them._

Here, they are two and one and one again, and the sacrifice is always looming ahead of them.  
  
_Mortal witness is not to be borne in sight but in annihilation._

Here, they always choose the Unspoken, for to do otherwise is pain, is starvation, is no choice at all.  
  
_May we bear witness, for desolation is thy watchword._  
  
But here, they also choose each other, time and time again.  
  
***

Ejarwa, the prophesied Chosen Bride. Oranna, the unremarkable novice. That’s how it should have been, Prioress Sangrai reflects ruefully, as she prepares to sit yet another sleepless vigil with blood trickling sluggishly from a cut in her palm, asking the Unspoken One for guidance about its current Chosen Bride, guidance with which it has yet to favor her.

Because Oranna also has an aptitude for magic. A strong one. Strong enough that the acolyte charged with instructing the smallest novices in magic soon requested to tutor the twins separately.

When the request came across her desk, Prioress Sangrai suspected Ejarwa must be helping Oranna, Ejarwa using her own connection to the Unspoken One to nurture Oranna’s magical gifts as well as her own. After all, the priestesses had only recently broken them of slipping into each other’s beds after lights-out and sleeping jumbled together like small barnyard animals.  
  
(“Or like two children surviving a plague house?” the lay sister instructed to punish them had asked archly. Sangrai had taken over then, directing the punishment for the lay sister as well as the twins.)

Then the instructress recommended that perhaps Ejarwa and Oranna be placed with the older girls for their magic lessons. The _much_ older girls.

Prioress Sangrai demanded a demonstration of their skills. They were, indeed, very advanced. Both of them. And if the prioress still suspected that Ejarwa was helping Oranna in secret (and she did), she could find no trace of it. She gave her consent but resolved to watch them closely.

And she has. What she has found is that they are well on their way to becoming brilliant magical practitioners but are otherwise unremarkable. The girls have adjusted well to House life. They are silent when they should be (most of the time), they are apt pupils, they are dutiful and obedient when given instruction by a priestess. They are correctly fearful and reverent in prayer, rite, and ritual.

This should comfort Sangrai. But it does not. Because they are also almost always together.

Of course, they never contradict protocol. Oranna speaks appropriately formally and reverently to Ejarwa, almost always, and accepts correction readily when she does not. Ejarwa is appropriately attentive to her lessons and meditations and speaks appropriately reverently of her sacred duty.

But something is not right. Sangrai may have succeeded to the prioress-ship recently, bare months before the discovery of Ejarwa, but she has lived out many of her years in the House of Silence. She has seen several chosen brides come and go: most recently, Ammarwe; before her, Anghara, the Chosen Bride of Sangrai’s acolyte years; and even before her, Serwen, the Chosen Bride of her novitiate, only a few years older than Sangrai herself. Those Brides were all properly divided from the other novices, all solitary and devoted only to the Unspoken One.

Ejarwa, though. Ejarwa does not break protocol, but whenever she has an unaccounted minute, the priestesses find her in Oranna’s company. While there, she behaves correctly. There is nothing _forbidden_ about Ejarwa remaining so close to Oranna, nothing that Sangrai can see. And yet, it troubles her.

She passes the night in prayer and meditation. No answer comes from the Unspoken One, which is, in itself, an answer. The Unspoken One has made its choice, its choice is Ejarwa, and it does not seem to have complaints of her conduct. Sangrai resolves to let it be. The twins’ thirteenth birthday approaches (though not soon enough, never soon enough, how are there still almost two years left?), and with it, the removal of the Chosen Bride from the classes of the novitiate. Surely that will restore the Chosen Bride to her proper place.

Surely.

It cannot come soon enough.

***

Birthdays in the House of Silence are unremarkable affairs. Unless you’re the Chosen Bride or the twin sister of the Chosen Bride, Oranna learns.

Because on the day the twins turn thirteen, Ejarwa is suddenly gone from the novices’ first class (Purgation Ritual). Oranna’s heart leaps into her throat and trembles there. They couldn’t have—the day hasn’t—the Chosen Bride is always fourteen. She thinks. She hopes.  
  
Oranna pays scant attention to her lessons and earns herself several onerous chores and an extra penitence in exchange, but she barely notices. It doesn’t matter compared to what might have—if Ejarwa—whatever Ejarwa—Oranna’s mind stutters and shies away from completing that thought. She’ll bear anything, if it means that Ejarwa is still safe. That they have another year.

When Ejarwa still hasn’t appeared during Advanced Litany, Oranna’s heart sinks into her belly. Surely the novices will take part in the Nameless Day? Maybe if she could focus on what the priestess is saying, she’d know for certain, but maybe she doesn’t want to know.

When the priestess bans Oranna from the midday meal for the week to sharpen her concentration, she decides that perhaps this is a trial of endurance from the Unspoken One. If she bears it all, welcomes it, continues to invite further trials, maybe she can earn her sister back that promised year.

After that, she doesn’t even try to focus anymore.

As the day wears on and the punishments pile up, Oranna smiles quietly to herself. It’s worth it. It’s all worth it.

There is nothing she won’t do to buy her sister back this last, promised year.

Nothing.

***

By the time she finally reaches her cell at the end of her Day of Trials (if Ejarwa can give her theologically significant day a name, surely Oranna can too), Oranna is starving, bone-weary, and aching. But she doesn’t allow herself to collapse onto her cot. She waits in perfect standing meditation pose, listening for Cweren’s faint snore to tell her it’s safe to sneak out to Ejarwa’s cell.

Oranna forces herself to count fifty snores, as always. This is not the time to skimp on safeguards. Then she tiptoes down the corridor and up the stairs to her sister’s cell.

“Ejarwa?” she whispers as she slithers around the door. “Ejarwa, are you all right?”

The cell is empty.

No, no, no, no, this can’t be. It can’t.

But it is.

Oranna crumples onto her sister’s cot. Maybe this is the last trial. Maybe not. Maybe the Day of Trials is one last cruel joke played by a god who has already stolen her sister.

Regardless, Oranna’s not leaving this room until she has an answer. One way or another.

She tucks her hands under her chin, stares at the wall, and waits.

***

The House of Silence is as silent as its name, shrouded in darkness and sleep, by the time Ejarwa stumbles into her cell, feet unsteady from fasting and lotus and the after-effects of blood ritual. All she wants is to sink onto her cot and stay there. Forever.

Except that her cot is already occupied. By her sister, who looks nearly as ragged and spent as Ejarwa feels.

All of that changes when Oranna sees her, though. Her whole being lights up, radiating joy and relief and something like exultation, as she springs up and throws her arms around Ejarwa.

“Where have you been all day? I was so worried—I thought—I thought maybe they changed your, you know,” Oranna bites her life and breaks off, hesitating.

“Your—Nameless Day,” she finally finishes, using Ejarwa’s private nickname for the day of sacrifice. Their next birthday.

“No,” Ejarwa reassures her. The word feels heavy and foreign in her mouth. “That’s still next year. Today was a ritual.”

“A ritual? But I looked for you, in chapel. You weren’t there.”

“Not in the chapel,” Ejarwa says, shivering. She wraps her arms around herself. “In the crypt. To mark that there’s one year left. To let the Unspoken know I’m coming.” She laughs, bitterly.  
  
“Ohhhh,” Oranna sighs. “I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?  
  
Her sister’s eyes are kind and loving and expectant, waiting to hear the whole tale. Of smoke and lotus and the ancient voice welling up from within her. Of the new, horrible uses of Prioress Sangrai’s ritual knife. They’ve done this a thousand times before, and here they are again.  
  
And all of a sudden, Ejarwa just—can’t. It’s too much. Her eyes are still heavy with lotus, and something deep inside her head feels like it’s grinding apart, and her sister is standing here, looking at her with concern, and there’s less than a year left until Ejarwa dies.

Dies.

She’s going to die.

There’s no way to escape it, not even here, not even now. So maybe the prioress is right—the ritual is right, the Unspoken One is right, everyone, all of them—Ejarwa just has to embrace her role. Relinquish all past attachments. The Unspoken One chose her. It wouldn’t choose wrong. So, surely, that means she can do this.

She just has to choose it back.

“We can’t do this anymore.” She flings the words out in a rush.

“What are you talking about, Ejarwa?”

“This. Us. Meeting at night, and studying, and praying together, and…all of it. It’s wrong, it’s always been wrong, I see that now. That’s what I saw tonight, Oranna.”

“You mean, in the ritual?”

“No. Not like that. You wouldn’t understand.”

“But Ejarwa—” Oranna’s eyes are wide, disbelieving.

“Don’t you see?” Ejarwa’s voice rises helplessly. “I’m the Chosen Bride. I only have a year left, and I have to be ready.”

“But…can’t I help you, Ejarwa?” Ejarwa’s never seen her sister look so at a loss. Not even when she was sick and begging for water Ejarwa couldn’t reach. Oranna’s eyes are wide, pleading, desperate. “Please. I can help. Just tell me what to do.”

“You want to help? You can’t. It’s coming for me, and I have to be ready, and I’m not. But I will be.” Ejarwa wants to look away from her sister, but she forces herself to stare straight into her sister’s face. She owes her that much, at least. And it will be good detachment practice, she supposes. At least she’ll know it’s worked when seeing Oranna like this doesn’t hurt anymore.

She breathes in. Forces herself to stand upright, without swaying, meeting her sister’s eyes levelly. They are exactly the same height. As always.

“You really want to help, Oranna?” Her sister’s eyes fill with hope. Just as before, it spreads, radiates, permeates throughout her body. She’s always so expressive. Ejarwa will miss that. Before the detachment kicks in, that is.

“Then get out, and don’t come back,” she forces herself to spit. “Stay away from me.”

Oranna reels back, as if from a blow. She composes her body, pulls the blank mask she usually uses for the priestesses over her face. But her eyes glare hurt and horror into Ejarwa’s.

“Fine,” Oranna says quietly. “I’m going. Prepare for your wedding, Ejarwa. I hope you’ll be happy.” Her voice breaks, and she flees from the room.

Ejarwa sinks heavily onto her cot. At least that’s over and done with.

Oranna will never forgive her, Ejarwa knows. She’s done the unforgivable.  
  
She just hopes it’s enough to finally help her put childish things like memories, and sisters, and life aside. It’s time to look forward to her death.  
  
Maybe now she finally can.  
  
***

Of course Oranna forgives her sister. Ejarwa is going to die horribly, and if she needs to hate Oranna in order to bear it, she’s welcome to. Even though Oranna’s heart feels like it’s shredding in her chest.

She consoles herself as best she can with stolen glances, glimpses of Ejarwa snatched from across the refectory, across the chapel, through the stacks in the library.  
  
Her sister always looks pale and grim. Paler and grimmer as the weeks wear on. Taught like an arrow about to fly.  
  
This doesn’t seem like peace, but Oranna’s never really seen her sister at peace before, so how would she know?  
  
(No. She knows. It’s determination, dogged stubbornness. And if stubbornness will help Ejarwa up that mountain, she’s welcome to every bit of it.)  
  
If distance is all she’ll take from Oranna, distance is what Oranna will give.  
  
Because Ejarwa is worth any price. Any price at all.  
  
***

In the month leading up to the day she’s always thought of as the Nameless Day, Ejarwa’s preparations intensify. She spends hours a day in prayer and meditation and more hours studying _The Book of the Unpsoken_ and _The Dream of Fly Agaric_ with Prioress Sangrai. The prioress pronounces her progress satisfactory, assures her that the Unspoken One will find her a worthy bride.  
  
Ejarwa isn’t so sure. Because for all her outward calm, inside she can’t stop screaming, and sleep is a distant memory. Fear is theologically permissible, she knows. But surely she should have been able to detach herself from worldly cares by now? She has devoted herself to the project single-mindedly for more than eleven months now. She’s lost an entire year with her sister—an entire year of Oranna’s wry, incisive comments; of the warmth of her shoulder as they lean against each other late at night; of the love that radiates out of her honeycomb eyes from across a room; of the absolutely infuriating way she grinds her tusks against Ejarwa’s collarbone when reading over her shoulder—and for what, if losing it still hurts? If she’s any closer to being a perfect vessel detached from her past than she was on her thirteenth birthday, Ejarwa certainly can’t tell.  
  
Maybe it will come upon her suddenly, she hopes night after night, as she lies on her cot, staring into the darkness of her cell. Maybe if she continues her preparations and doesn’t falter, doesn’t waver, the Unspoken One will grace her with clarity, resolve, and purpose. Any moment now.  
  
Maybe. But it’s hard to muster her faith when around every corner, she seems to see her parents’ dead eyes staring. That finality. That emptiness. That end.  
  
Sometimes, she sees Oranna’s eyes instead. Which should feel like a relief, except that they’re her sister’s eyes as they were on the night of their thirteenth birthday. Wide with horror and grief and _no, Ejarwa, please—_

She’ll never get to make up with her sister. Never get to apologize or hear her laugh. Never anything but her own eyes, staring and staring but not seeing, never seeing. Trying to imagine not being behind her eyes anymore feels unthinkable, so why is she constantly thinking about it?  
  
Her life hasn’t been enough, and it’s not fair, and that’s a horrible, blasphemous thing to think, but Ejarwa can’t stop thinking it.  
  
The night before the Nameless Day arrives, and her miracle still hasn’t. Neither has sleep. Instead, every breath Ejarwa draws reminds her that she’s one breath closer to her death. To blood, to darkness, and to whatever lies at the heart of the mountain. The only thing she knows about it, after nearly ten years in the House of Silence, is that it’s certain to be gruesome.

She can’t do this anymore. She can’t lie here another second. She can’t bear it. But somehow she has to.  
  
_Oranna would know how_ , her treacherous mind whispers. But is it really so treacherous? All this time, she’s thought that her clarity would arrive on its own, unbidden but earned. Maybe she needs guidance. Maybe if she sees her sister one last time, that sense of detachment will arrive.  
  
And even if it doesn’t, at least she’ll have a new memory of her sister to hold close. She can memorize a new look in Oranna’s eyes (maybe one of forgiveness?) to carry down into the dark with her.

No. The very thought makes Ejarwa’s pulse beats so wildly in her throat that she knows it must be a false consolation. It must be. Nothing she desires this much can be worthy.

Or can it?

Maybe seeing her sister one last time is a false consolation, but Oranna has always been better than she is at interpreting doctrine, Ejarwa reasons. Surely the Unspoken One couldn’t begrudge its Bride one visit to a fellow novice who can help her reconcile her mind to the ritual ahead?

Of course it could. The Unspoken One has never struck her as particularly forgiving, and she should know, she’s had its voice in her head long enough. But Ejarwa can’t forget the look of hurt on Oranna’s face when Ejarwa told her they should stop the night-time visits, that Ejarwa had to prepare for her sacred duty. She can’t go to her death without telling her sister that she’s sorry, that she loves her, that she’ll miss her, miss everything—no, she’s not going to think about that. She’s going to sneak into her sister’s room, she’ll apologize, and Oranna will explain the finer theological points of sacrifice to her. It’s a perfectly Chosen Bride-ly way to spend the night before the Nameless Day.

She tiptoes out of her cell and down one flight of stairs to the novices’ wing. Oranna’s cell is halfway down the row, and Ejarwa finds herself automatically rolling her feet—toe, ball, heel, toe, ball, heel—in that familiar silent rhythm of so many childhood forays into her sister’s room.

She slips the door open just wide enough to dart through and hisses her sister’s name. Oranna has always been a heavy sleeper.

But tonight, Oranna bolts upright immediately. “Is it time?” she squeaks out, looking so lost, so sad, that Ejarwa’s heart seizes. How could she have pushed her sister away?

“Oranna, it’s me. Ejarwa. I came to say—” and that’s as far as she gets before her sister hugs her so tightly her breath huffs out in an ungainly whoosh.

“Oranna, I’m sorry, I never meant—” she tries again.

“Stop that, I know,” Oranna hisses into her ear. She pulls back and examines Ejarwa at arm’s length.

“How…how are you? Really.”

“I’m scared,” Ejarwa says. She’s ashamed that her voice breaks.

“Fear is no fault. It is right to fear the Unspoken One,” Oranna offers automatically.

Usually, Ejarwa finds that comforting. She still finds it comforting. It’s just that it’s such a relief to be standing here in her sister’s room and find that Oranna still understands her effortlessly after months of silence that she bursts into tears. Loud, noisy, messy, disgusting, probably blasphemous tears.

Even now, Oranna isn’t at a loss. She pulls Ejarwa down onto the bed and pushes her face efficiently into her shoulder to muffle the sound, then strokes her hair.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Ejarwa whimpers, to her own horror. “I know that’s blasphemy, I just—I keep thinking of…you know, and how they looked, and I’ll miss you, and I don’t want to be dead!”

The last words come out in a wail, so it’s a good thing her mouth is still against Oranna’s shoulder. For now. Because this, finally, might make Oranna hate her. Not for the blasphemy—even now, Ejarwa can acknowledge that her sister loves her more than she cares about blasphemy—but because Ejarwa’s failed. She pushed Oranna away for nothing, so she can’t possibly have earned forgiveness already. Ejarwa certainly hates herself enough, why shouldn’t her sister hate her too?

But Oranna keeps stroking her hair, so she must not hate Ejarwa too much. Ejarwa risks a glance at her, and her sister nods at her, large eyes full of sympathy.

“I’m sorry. I just…I don’t know what to do. Or I do know, but I don’t know how I can.”

Ejarwa looks hopefully to Oranna and waits. This is when it will happen, when Oranna will find the perfect theological angle to help her. She just knows it.

And she’s half right, because if there is one thing Oranna has learned in the House of Silence, it’s sacrifice. The power and the duty and the beauty of it.

“I’ll do it,” she says, reaching out to clasp her sister’s trembling hand. “I’ll do it, Ejarwa.”

This is more horrifying than Oranna hating her. “You can’t.”

“I can. It’s not like the prioress can tell us apart, anyway.”

“But the Unspoken One—it’ll know.” Ejarwa is grasping at straws now.

“I don’t think the god cares which of us goes,” Oranna breathes. “Don’t the priestesses say that the Ritual of Oblation only works with a willing sacrifice? Well, why should this be any different? You aren’t willing. I am.”

“I can’t let you do this, Oranna.” Ejarwa swipes at the tears still trickling out of her eyes.

“You can,” Oranna insists. “You can and you will. You saved me once, remember? Well, now it’s my turn.”

Ejarwa doesn’t want to agree. She can’t agree. This is Oranna, this is her sister, this is the one person in all the world she loves, the sister who has come back to her against all odds and Ejarwa’s own fears. Ejarwa can’t possibly let her—

But her jaw is aching from the effort to keep her teeth from chattering, to keep the fear locked deep inside, where no one can see. She looks inside herself and tries to find that fey glib surety with which she vowed away everything to save her sister so long ago, but all she finds is a yawning, abyssal fear, clotted and dark and choking.

“Ejarwa—”

“All right.” The words fly out of her mouth unbidden. “All right, we’ll do it. If you’re sure? Really, really sure?” Ejarwa searches Oranna’s face for any doubts or second thoughts.

“Of course I am.” Her sister grabs Ejarwa’s hand and squeezes it. “Chosen Bride of the god? How could I pass that up?”

Her tone is light, but her beeswax eyes burn bright with resolve, and Ejarwa hates herself for how relieved she feels.

“Here,” says her sister, now briskly practical. “Trade nightgowns with me. Oh, and tusk caps, I’d better have yours.”

Too soon, the twins are dressed in each other’s castoffs.

“How do I look?” Oranna spins in a circle, cocks a hand on her hip for inspection.

Like I must have a minute ago, Ejarwa thinks wildly. Except that she knows she never looked so calm, so steady. So beautiful.

“Beautiful. Mother’s tusk caps suit you,” she chokes out in answer.

“Should’ve offered them to me years ago, I’d’ve switched with you then,” Oranna teases.

“Oranna—”

“Shhh, it’s already getting light. They’ll be coming for you soon.”

“Oranna, I’ll be there,” Ejarwa blurts out. “I’ll be standing where you would have, and if you change your mind…”

Oranna nods once, as if she doesn’t quite trust her voice. “I won’t, though.”

“But if you do, Oranna—”

“Ejarwa.”

“What?”

“It’s Ejarwa now, _Oranna_ ,” her sister says simply. “They’ve always told us Ejarwa is the one who goes, and Oranna is the one who stays. So I’ll be Ejarwa for you. You be Oranna for me.”

Oranna—or Ejarwa?—her sister, anyway—kisses Ejarwa lightly on the forehead and slips out the door, leaving her alone in the novice’s cell.

***

At first, Ejarwa sits stiffly on her sister’s cot, afraid she might miss things, now that no one’s coming for her. What if they take Oranna off without her? How are the novices supposed to join the procession on the Nameless Day, anyway? She should have asked Oranna.

But she needn’t have worried. The low hum of preparation is unmistakable. It buzzes through the walls, filling even the air with solemn anticipation. With shaking hands, she dresses in her sister’s robe, fumbling clumsily over the slight button differences from the one she’s worn as the Chosen Bride. Buttons done, she steps out of the cell and starts for the stairs.

“Oranna!” hisses another novice. “Oranna, where are you going?”

Ejarwa stops herself just in time, turns back to see the other novices lined up outside their cells, standing still and silent.

“To the procession,” Ejarwa says hastily.

“But Prioress Sangrai said we’re to wait for the first bell, then walk down to the courtyard to join the procession,” the first novice insists. Ejarwa tries to place her. Moon-faced, officious, certainly not one of Oranna’s friends. Always trying to get the twins in trouble when they were small—what is her name? Cweren, that’s it.

“Weren’t you listening?” Cweren continues.

“I forgot,” Ejarwa says. Cweren looks like she’s about to argue, or gloat, or something, but the novice beside her catches her sleeve, hisses something about “her sister.” Ejarwa fixes her eyes firmly ahead into the middle distance and keeps them there until the bell summons the novices to the courtyard.

***

It turns out that the novices walk in two lines at the back of the procession, following two lines of acolytes, who follow two lines of priestesses, who follow the palanquin bearers, all of whom are following the Chosen Bride and her sacrificial calf, and Ejarwa despairs of being able to get close enough to catch even a glimpse of her sister, let alone step in if she falters. How she’ll do that, she doesn’t know, but she will, she insists to herself. If Oranna needs her, she’ll be there.

But when the procession halts at the altar below the Shrine and the bearers lower the prioress’s palanquin to the ground, the two lines spread to the sides of the path. Ejarwa inches her toes forward and forward and forward again, breaking the perfect parallel, so that she has a perfect view: Her sister. The calf. The altar. The flash of a knife in Prioress Sangrai’s hand. The blood flowing down the channel of the altar into the bowl on the ground.

Ejarwa’s sister stoops gracefully and lifts the bowl of blood. She raises it high and pivots, presenting it to the crowd in a motion that seems so sacred and right that Ejarwa almost forgets that her sister has never rehearsed it before.  
  
And then all thought flees as her sister looks her dead in the eye and then lifts her chin proudly. The House of Silence bows before her, but Ejarwa doesn’t move, can’t move. She stares into the eyes that are the same shape and shade as her own, the eyes that have followed her their whole life, and reads her sister’s love and pride and defiance. She hopes her sister can read her love and her desperate, grateful shame. Her vow to be worthy of her sister’s sacrifice.  
  
And then the press of people between them—prioress, palanquin bearers, priestesses, acolytes, novices—rise up out of their bow and the moment breaks. Her sister turns to go. And as she goes, Ejarwa hears the echo of her sister’s voice: _Ejarwa is the one who goes._ Her sister is going—oh, how she’s going—and so her sister is Ejarwa after all.

Ejarwa—no, Oranna, now, Oranna is the name of the one who stays, has to be or it’s all for nothing—watches her sister walk up the stairs to the shrine. _Ejarwa_ ’s steps are steady. _Ejarwa_ never falters. _Oranna_ is the one whose knees knock, whose hand is clenched to her lips to smother the keening cry attempting to break loose, whose eyes stay fixed on her sister, who would pray for a miracle if there were anyone to grant it, if it weren’t direst sacrilege for her to stand where she stands—unsworn, unmoving, forsworn—to wear her sister’s name and face.  
  
Oranna knows that if it were her, if she were still Ejarwa, she would pause on the threshold. No, if it were her, she’d run screaming into the woods.  
  
But it isn’t her. It’s Ejarwa. Ejarwa is the sacrifice, and Ejarwa’s faith is clear as crystal and bright as a shield. Ejarwa sweeps forward imperiously and steps over the threshold as if it is nothing.  
  
It isn’t nothing. It’s everything.  
  
And then she is gone.  
  
And Oranna remains. Oranna is the name of the one who stays.

She waits for the palanquin bearers to lift the prioress again, for the priestesses to sweep by with dignified steps, for the acolytes to stumble past with the body of the calf. Then she follows the other novices back to the House of Silence, back to the life her sister stole for her. She is Oranna now, and she will stay.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my dear friend [ Rosy_Manatee ](/users/Rosy_Manatee/) for the beta read, the encouragement, and (especially) the listening to me babble about this story all week.


End file.
